Prevention strategies are steps to prevent the harm of children within SIM.

SIM’s prevention strategies include:

  • Increasing awareness of child safety risks.
  • Effective recruitment procedures.
  • Strong accountability and supervision.
  • Understanding of needs of individuals & families, specifically their children.

Where does wellbeing fit into safety in SIM?

Safety is the condition of being protected from something or someone that could cause harm. Children should not experience some situations like being sexually harmed. Therefore, there needs to be substantial effort by everyone to reduce the risk of serious harm to children.

But one cannot prevent all challenges to a child. This is not only impossible but is also counterproductive as children need to develop internal resources to be resilient to the day-to-day challenges that everyone meets.

Therefore, a child’s community must also intentionally promote children’s wellbeing.

Wellbeing is a personal state, when a child’s psychological, social and physical resources are adequate for the psychological, social and physical challenges that they face.

This can be applied to all individual children, regardless of their age, culture and gender. Wellbeing is attainable for any child, and it is not dependent on any one cultural parenting style.

Children have essential needs that must be met to support their safety and wellbeing. These include:

Physical needs

Children require adequate food and living conditions.

Social needs

Child require the opportunity to develop appropriate social skills.

Supervision needs

Appropriate adult supervision to provide for the safety of the child.

Emotional needs

Children need to feel loved, have a positive self-esteem and to feel significant in their family.

Educational needs

Children to be provided with relevant educational support and opportunities.

Challenges

A child will need to navigate psychological, social and physical challenges throughout their whole lives. These challenges are influenced by their developmental stage and individual circumstances.

Resources

Individual children and families have different resources at their disposal. Concerns to a child’s wellbeing occurs when their resources are not adequate to deal with a specific challenge. Therefore, there are times a child or family can benefit from the assistance and support of others.